Sunday, March 6, 2011

Augustine: Confessions

Augustine: Confessions
Read Book XI
text available at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/augustine/confessions.xiv.html
Focus on
1. How can we perceive past, present and future?
2. Why is it difficult to describe time?
3. What's the relationship between God and time?
Journals due on March 13.

13 comments:

  1. According to Augustine, we cannot perceive the past or the future. The Present also, is hard to define for the present is on-going, and thus, measuring something which has no end is impossible. Throughout his whole work, Augustine tries to define, and understand time, a concept which he finds extremely difficult, because he does not want to presume an answer that is not correct, and in effect, infer something that might not be true and offend his 'god'. One definition of "time" is "A nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future." As I thought, many definitions of "time" was through the point of view of science. Which, a devout Christian (probably) would not support. Then, I must ask, what is time, in respect to spirituality? Is there such a thing? And why, of all topics does Augustine question the meaning of time? It is one thing to question the origin of one's being, but time?
    Of course, I understand that ‘god’ lives for eternity, and it apparently created humans about 5000 years ago. So I do understand that he would question 1), what was god doing over 5000 years ago, and 2), why did it think to create humans after an eternity of doing apparently nothing. I must say I am ignorant on the subject of the Christian religion and how they believe their god made humans. But with that said, does it really matter what god might have done or did not do before it got up off its couch and made man? Should we not care and dissect what it has done so far and why it did it?
    Personally, I feel as though trying to define, or put “time” into a little box and trying define it, is juvenile. Let alone impossible. “Time” is an immeasurable thing, it is invisible to our senses, and no devise we create can tell time. Thus, defining something like “Time”, is pointless, for there is no possibility of ever knowing what it is/how it works/ who made it/ or when it was created (when it started).

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  2. As Augustine prays to God to forgive his sins and cleanse his mind and teach him to speak more eloquent, he seeks not for earthly things but God’s wisdom, knowledge, and understanding. Augustine was trying to understand the difference between infinite time and our earthly time. Augustine seeks to learn how to measure time as time is constantly mentioned to be of three parts, past, present, and future and how it relates to God’s infinite time. Augustine wanted to learn how he can learn to distinguish God’s time as when God created the earth and what he did prior to creating it from our earthly time? Time is in constant motion and therefore present time cannot be measured but can only be measured in a broad aspect such as in hours, days, months and years. A person can measure time in past, present and future in abroad as to say, I am 20 years old (current), or it has been 5 years since I have been on a vacation (past), or I intend to buy a house in the next 6 months (future). You can not measure present time to an exact moment because time is constantly moving from future to present, to past. Now if there were no past, present, or future time, then we would be in and infinite time. Our current time can be measured since everything has a beginning and end, while in God’s time it is infinite and can not be measured at all because it is continuous and never ceases. There is no end to the past and no end to the future in Gods time. That is the reason God gave us night and day to be able to distinguish the days. Even if the day stood still and daylight would stay for hours you could determine time by your surroundings. Plants live and die; people grow old and die the same as animals. You cannot measure time by the sun as it set from sunrise to sunset at different intervals of time during each month but you can measure it from sunrise to sunset. You can also measure distance by time but you can not measure time by distance. You can measure the time it takes a person to travel from one place to the other or the distance it takes a train or plane to arrive from one destination to the other. Overall, Augustine seemed to be trying to compare/contrast God’s infinite time that has no beginning or end to our earthly time that does have a beginning and end.

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  3. How can we perceive past, present and future in book 5 He writes that all creation seems to exist in time. The past, present, and future are the ways in which time is knowable to human beings. But, he argues that the past and the future, regardless of the presence of memory, do not exist, all we have is the present moment. Which means one should only think about now, Let the past be the past, and the future will be. Why is time, difficult to describe time, Because no one understand or no how to define time. 3. What's the relationship between God and time? A lot of people was confuse about god and the bible so much people didn’t have faith.

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  5. Time is difficult to describe because it can only be perceived or measured while it is passing. According to Augustine, time is only felt as it is going on. Instances can only be measured in passing thoughts and occurrences. These are measured in proportions as they pass. Augustine's pondering of time was for his relationship with God.

    The relationship between God and time is very meaningful to Augustine's plea to God to let him know celestial truths so that he could spread the "good news." Augustine states "You are the creators of all time, if any time was before you made heaven and earth." He felt that it was a ponder of man what God did before he created the heaven and the earth. Augustine felt that people who ask this do not understand the Eternity of God, which is exempt from the relation of time. In Augustine's opening statement in Confessions he writes"Is it possible, O Lord, that since thou art in eternity, thou art ignorant of what I am saying to thee? He refer's to the time of eternity, but also used eternity to mean heaven. It appears that he believes that eternity is in a different realm of space and time.

    However, I want to mention in this journal also that Augustine refers to the celestial ignorance of man that was written down by Plato and taught by Aristotle. Indeed, we are ignorant in what manner God teaches future things. So, if God is all seeing, he must see our futures. No beings (except supposed people with gift or are psychic) can see the future we just keep experiencing life on this earth and all that comes with it, whether that be happy or sad.

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  6. Reading Augustine's book 11 was very interesting because it really felt like i was diving into his mind and following each thought as it developed. It wasn't just any piece of literary scripture. He was going back and forth with God in his mind letting him know that he doesn't mean to question his authority but to express his love for him with the inquiry and admiration of his omnipotent eternal presence.
    I love the reading after chapter VI to be honest. I enjoyed reading about how he questioned how literal the Genesis should be taken. When God spoke and created heaven and earth he wondered about who he was speaking to and if something was being spoken too. which lead him to wondering about it being something that was already in existence or was created before heaven and earth. That lead me into to a sort of thought process that questioned whether time existed before God because if he spoke and knew of language he should have a sense of time but see he is eternal! He stated in Chapter XIII that "there was never a time where there was no time". I felt astonished that he was able to even think so intricately about the subject of time and elaborate on its properties and how we perceive it. Honestly I didn't hold human intellect in such high esteem before Mendel partly because I always thought that even inquiring about such wonders of religion would be considered sinning and/or out ruled by impiety. But he discusses the possible states that God could have been in before the "beginning"
    In order to perceive the past we have to recall our memories as markers in time which is why it exists. The present would be what is current or what is occurring and exists because we live through it and the future is what hasn't happened but in order to get an idea of what might happen we make guesses to predict how the future may be. It is difficult to describe time there really isn't a starting point to how time began for Augustine it never ends and there really isn't a marker for measurement because he argues that though some may say the celestial bodies are a marker he states that those bodies work withing time. God and time is concluded to be ongoing and never ending because God is eternal and so is time which makes him timeless.

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  7. Augustine believes there’s a God but God did not physically create the universe. An order for him to have done that there had to have been a time. He says in Chapter X-12 “For the will of God is not a created thing, but comes before the creation—and this is true because nothing could be created unless the will of the creator came before it.” There could not have been a creator because time didn’t exist, which is why he asks what he was doing before creation. The creation can only be accepted in the sense that it’s eternal, there’s no beginning and no end. The creator is the beginning and the end. He’s saying God doesn’t have time because he created time hence where the eternal part plays its role. Augustine goes on to say chapter XIII-15 “But if there was no time _before_ heaven and earth, how, then can it be asked, “what was thou doing then?” For there was no the “then” when there was no time”.
    When looking at time he doesn’t seem to have a concrete answer to “what” it is. Chapter XIV-17 "What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks me, I do not know. Yet I say with confidence that I know that if nothing passed away, there would be no past time; and if nothing were still coming, there would be no future time; and if there were nothing at all, there would be no present time. Although Augustine can’t give a concrete answer his explanation is basically common sense. You a past to have a present and you a present to have a future. Then he goes on to say how is it that we have both when the past is gone so we can no longer consider it. The present hasn’t come so we can’t consider that either we can only count on the present. But if the present didn’t become a past we will be living in eternal time which in hand would be eternal life.

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  8. The difficulty that comes with trying to accurately describe time is a result of our concepts of past, present and future. Because, according to Augustine, time is continuous and without end it is always in the present. We do not associate all time as a present however, because we cannot perceive the entirety of time. What is considered past is exists in only fragmented memory or hearsay, and what exists in the future we can only predict and only experience as part of our fleeting present. This flawed perception is a result of mortal life which is defined by a beginning and end, and our acknowledgement that a past and future exists beyond our individual life. This view leads to the obvious flaw in the concept of time within the question “What had God made before he made heaven and earth?” because it implies that time can exist without creation, similar to how time can exist without an individual life. As stated before, time exists as one whole, and within that is also creation; the lack of events to be framed within the length of time renders the concept of time useless as the aforementioned question since time and creation are dependents.

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  9. In chapter XI Augustine talks about how we can perceive time(in the past,present and future form) as the past being forced(pushed) back from the incoming future.Augustine also claims that in the Eternal nothing passes away, but time itself is "simultaneously present". The reason Augustine refers to us(humans) as having difficult time trying to describe time is because we try to decipher time by comparing the time we've spent here on earth as relevance[truth] to a universal time, and Augustine talks about how in this process of thinking that we are unstable. Augustine also refers to the divine knowledge of time as wisdom of god. I believe he claims the relationship between god and time is that he believe knowledge of time or even perception of it comes from the privilege god has given us, by reason of time deriving from "Wisdom of God".

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  11. According to Augustine there are three types of ways in which we can divide time (past, present, and future). Yet, he argues that the most important time is the present, simply because the past is something that has already happened and can only live in our minds and the future is the unknown. Augustine also debated whether or not time has always existed and therefore he started to question some of his beliefs about god. What I find very interesting is the fact that we can question the creation of the world and the existence of God by simply trying to understand something as simple, yet, as complex as time. According to him, time doesn’t exist and it’s just simply the idea of time that we humans have created throughout life since time doesn’t have a beginning or an end. The past and the future only exist because we have created it in our present, but not because it actually exists. Yet, by making this argument clear he also proves the existence of God because since time doesn’t exist God is eternal and therefore he doesn’t need time because everything happens at once.

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  12. St. Agustine is troubled because he wants to understand more about how God's created the world and humans. But, explaining God's eternity and timeless being is a hard task to accomplish. He supports his point of view by pointing that before God created Heaven and Hearth that "There was no time, therefore, when thou hadst not made anything, because hadst made time itself." St. Augustine then explains how God is omnipotent and is beyond any restrictions or constraints linked to time. However, he understands that us as humans are linked to the concept of time which he has also a hard time explaining.
    He differentiates three segments of time as past, present and future. St. Augustine says that the past is what no longer is, the present what currently is and that the future is what it will be. However, he mentions that we only can account for the present when we know that it has passed. The past we can only recall because at certain point it was present and even though we can imagine the future, it does not exist because everything is in the future.

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  13. To my understanding, Augustine argues that time doesn't really exist. He believes that past and future only exists in our minds as temporary. In addition, Augustine believed that in God's view all time exists at once. God created the earth not at one specific time, but constantly in one eternal act. Further, he is illustrating, with a temporal example, a specific view of the universe as unified across all time in an unchanging God. Since time is simply an illusion of the lower hierarchy, it means the same thing to wander and return to God as it does to owe one's existence to God at every moment.

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